‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re right.’
‘I just can’t talk about it any more.’
Under the table her hands were shaking. It was just like Sean all over again, Sean talking to her, trying to explain something that men don’t want to explain. And even Luke’s voice was the same as his father’s talking about the army. She had the old feeling of not knowing what to say. She didn’t want to provoke him but what about the practical things? Was he out for good? Would anyone be prosecuted for what happened? Would he just live in Glasgow now and settle down and maybe keep away from all this stuff that preyed on his mind?
‘Can I just say something, Luke?’
‘Knock yourself out.’
‘No, not like that. Nothing big.’ She took a gulp of wine and looked away. ‘I was never able to ask her anything about myself.’
‘You mean Gran?’
‘That’s right. I can’t ask. I can’t say, “What happened in my childhood?” or “What was my father really like?”’
‘Why not?’
‘She made it impossible.’
‘But why?’
‘I don’t know. And I’ve always asked myself, “Why can’t she speak to me?” Everybody has questions.’
‘Yes.’ He could see far down into Alice just then, the quiet, lonely life of his mother who was never free of them all.
‘I always felt my presence wasn’t called for.’
‘Mum …’
‘It’s fine. You learn how to live with these things.’ She took another drink. ‘It was always clear I got in the way of some story she had built about her and my father and what they did, who they were. If I had any doubts or any questions I had to put them away. That’s my life.’
‘Maybe that will change,’ Luke said. She looked at him and knew she was looking at him with all the love she had.
God bless him, she thought, for thinking life was something you solved. ‘I was so envious,’ she said, ‘when you were a boy and the two of you were reading those Dickens novels. You were like a gang. You and my mother and her favourite authors.’
‘They were just books.’
‘No, they weren’t. They were passports. You and she went to unknown places together and I was left behind.’
‘Anyone can read them.’
‘Don’t pretend to be shallow, Luke. You know what I mean. She taught you how to look for more out of life.’
‘I suppose she did.’ He could see the pain in her face.
‘She never told me who I was,’ she said. ‘Just who I wasn’t.’
‘Don’t get upset, Mum.’
‘Some people make life bigger for other people. And I’ve always been on the wrong side of that bargain.’
He just felt awkward. He wasn’t going to say things just to soothe her because she was too shrewd for that. He didn’t quite see it but his instinct was still to hold out against his mother, to stall her sentiment and deny her all the small benefits of possession. And she changed the subject after sniffing to clear the air. ‘All that stuff you’re saying, about not belonging anywhere, that’s just the war talking,’ she said. ‘It’s just because of what you went through in Afghanistan. It’s all the stress and what have you. But I think you know where you belong.’
He felt his phone buzz in his pocket and reckoned it would be one of the many texts from the boys in the platoon. He wished he could dive into the carpet and swim to a time when allegiances were clear. The thing he loved about Glasgow was that you never felt truly alone there: a sense of community upbraided you at every corner, but as his eye wandered vacantly over the floor he felt pinched by the local style. ‘Well, Mum,’ he said at last. ‘I wanted life to be more than us. Much more than us. Maybe that’s why I went away in the first place.’
Alice was looking at the old wallpaper. ‘The way my mother spoke to you when you were a boy,’ she said. ‘She hardly spoke to me at all when I was a girl, and there were these long absences, when she was away somewhere, Blackpool probably or on holidays with him, and I stayed with the neighbours. My father I only saw a few times and I can’t picture him ever once lifting me up. He was awkward. He once gave me a doll but I felt it had belonged to somebody else.’
‘Mum.’
‘No, it’s all right. It was different with you and my mother. I remember you saying to her “What’s colour, Granny?” and she pinched your cheek.’
‘I remember that.’
‘And she said, “Colour is light on fire.”’
LANGOUSTINES
When Gordon turned up he was pleased to know the menu better than anybody else and he wanted to argue about fisheries and good governance but Luke asked if they could change the subject. Alice blushed and looked at her husband. They knew Luke was wrong. Gordon stroked his moustache with his bottom lip as a way of not speaking up, though to him it was a pity about his stepson, who obviously went away too young and no longer understood the priorities of his country. He knew nothing about policy and taxes or what makes a people, and now, God help him, he was like those kids who think their country is Google.
‘You’re just not going deep enough,’ Luke said. ‘Money has imploded. Religion has gone mad. Privacy is disappearing. The ice-cap is melting and children are starving to death. And you want to sing an old song about national togetherness.’
‘He does a couple of tours in Afghanistan and suddenly he’s Bill Gates,’ Gordon said.
‘I did four tours in Iraq.’
‘Of course.’
‘You’re not
thinking
.’
‘No,’ Gordon said. ‘We’re thinking, in our own country, about how it’s important to ensure that elderly people can still get their medicine.’
‘Luke,’ Alice said. ‘You’ve always had your head in the clouds. Always the idealist.’
‘Out of touch with reality,’ said Gordon.
‘The games are finished. All bets are off,’ Luke said. ‘We’re living in the big world now.’
‘This is a big enough world for me,’ Gordon said.
‘So why make it smaller?’
‘I thought you wanted to change the subject, Luke,’ his mother said and she smiled without comfort.
Gordon was wearing a yellow sweater. He knew how to make money but didn’t really know how to spend it. It showed on his face, Alice thought, wondering if she was just too caught up in the mystery of her own family’s approval. That was it. When his langoustines came and Gordon sniffed them on the plate she realised his lack of style told against him in a way she tried to ignore. She loved him for his kindness and his politics but not really for himself.
‘You’ll come round,’ she said to Luke. ‘The whole country’s slowly coming round and you will, too.’
After a while they talked about the business of Anne’s photography and the letter that came from Canada. Alice said the photographs were just another part of Anne’s secretive life. She had kept it all back for her private self and her times in Blackpool. ‘If the offer had come even ten years ago’, she said, ‘we’d all have jumped on a plane to Toronto and been proud to see her having her moment.’
Luke didn’t believe it. He didn’t believe there was ever a time like that, when Alice would happily have flown to Toronto to celebrate her mother’s achievement. ‘I don’t think it’s for us to say what happens,’ he said. ‘I don’t know anything about photography but it’s important for her.’
‘She’s just not fit enough,’ Alice said.
‘We’ll see.’
‘You don’t seem to understand something, Luke. I know my mother. I know everything about her.’
But he could see it happening. He was certain the exhibition would take place and that his grandmother would be part of it. He had no idea what it would take, but he knew he would go there, that his mother would come too, and they would see for the first time what Anne had done. He pondered the possibility that his grandmother had once had a fresh vision of life and he wanted to place himself within it. Alice, too: he wanted to put her there, even as she said no. He wasn’t angry at his mother for trying to bury the whole thing.